Shadow

by Jan Stryvant

  Shadow punched him hard in the balls.

  Tony gasped and moaned, cursed him a few times, then said nothing. Shadow opened up the drawers in the bathroom and started looking.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Tony asked him.

  Shadow found a nice straight razor, which surprised him. Tony was just an old-fashioned guy he guessed.

  “I said I don’t know where the cop is!” Tony said again.

  Shadow took the razor and started to slowly cut off Tony’s clothes.

  “Talk to me you freak!”

  Shadow didn’t say a word, but continued to remove Tony’s shoes, pants, and underwear. He cut the lower part of his shirt off, but left the rest. By now Tony was starting to sound panicked.

  “I don’t know anything, you got the wrong guy!”

  Shadow grabbed Tony’s balls and squeezed making him cry out in pain. Then he started to shave them, which considering how dry the skin was, and how much Shadow was nicking him, had to hurt.

  “No please! Please no! Okay, okay, I know they took the cop. But I don’t know where he is! Honest, please don’t ...”

  Shadow grabbed his cock and started to shave it. Then held the blade up against the base. Tony was screaming by now.

  “Okay okay, he’s in the warehouse on Twenty-third and Market. In the basement underneath the gaming room. Please don’t cut my dick off! Anything but that! Kill me if you must, but don’t castrate me!”

  Shadow smiled to himself and put the knife down. Changing into his medical form he got out a syringe and filled it with a sedative and shot Tony up with enough to keep him out for a few hours. He then took care of the girl and left them both bound on the bed.

  The warehouse was one of Laughing Boy’s illegal gambling establishments, Shadow knew about it, being as it belonged to Laughing Boy however, he avoided it. The security on it was a lot less than on his headquarters though, so getting in was fairly easy. Getting into the basement was a little bit trickier, but when he finally did so he found a room with four armed men sitting in it, a heavy door on the far side of the room, locked, with the scent of another man behind it. There was a manhole cover in one corner of the room; his nose told him it led directly to the sewers. He didn’t have to listen to them long to know he had found the right place. Retreating he found an empty room on the second floor and he pulled out Tony’s cell phone, which he had grabbed when he’d emptied Tony’s pockets.

  “Hello?”

  “Tomas?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “Tall dark and sexy, who else?” He growled.

  “Should I be happy that you’re calling me?”

  “Very. You know of the gambling house Laughing Boy is running on Twenty-third and Market?”

  “I do now.”

  “How soon can you hit it?”

  “Seeing as the whole team is sitting here waiting for a lead, I’d say we could be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Good, hit it, hit it hard.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a cop in a cell in the basement. I’ll get the guards. Just make sure when you take out the muscle upstairs you don’t shoot me when you come into the basement. Can you do that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, one other thing, I never called you, we never talked. This tip didn’t come from me.”

  “Why?”

  “Save it for later. Right now you need to move.” Shadow said and hung up. He tossed the phone in the corner and went back down stairs and waited. After twenty minutes he snuck into the room in full stealth, the door to it was still open, and he watched as the guys continued playing cards. Shadow didn’t know what they’d do when the attack came, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  *BOOM*

  The building vibrated from the noise and screaming could be heard upstairs.

  “THIS IS THE POLICE! THIS IS A RAID! YOU’RE ALL UNDER ARREST FOR GAMBLING!”

  It was so loud everyone in the room heard it clearly.

  “Aw fuck! A raid!” One of the men said tossing his cards down on the table and drawing his pistol. The others did the same and looked towards the one who had spoken first. Shadow had the impression he was in charge here.

  “What do we do, Joe?” one of them asked.

  “You go out into the hallway, all the way down by the stairs. Yell if they come this way. If they come down here I’ll kill the Pig and dump the body down the sewers while you guys hold them off. As long as they don’t find anything here they can’t pin a kidnapping rap on us.”

  “Do we have to kill him, Joe?” asked another.

  “What, getting yella on me? He’s seen us all, of course we have to! Go out there with Billy. I don’t want any weak-kneed kids in here.”

  Shadow noticed the guy looked relieved and quickly followed the other one out the door leaving just two in the room.

  “Lock it up behind them two.” The leader told the other man in the room, who was quick to do just that.

  As soon as the one turned his back to close and lock the door Shadow shifted and quickly broke the other man’s neck, and took his gun.

  “Sheesh I can’t believe those two weren’t willing to ...” He said and turned to see that Shadow was standing there holding the other man’s gun in one hand and the man by the neck in the other, “What! Shadow?”

  The gun kicked twice in Shadow’s hand and the other guy dropped to the floor clutching his chest as he died.

  Working quickly Shadow opened up the sewer grate, emptied their pockets, and dumped the man he shot down there first before he bled too much, followed quickly by the body of the other guy. Both made a nice splash, this was fairly close to the waterfront after all. He took their cash and threw the rest of the stuff in after them, including their guns.

  He dropped the cover back into place and then peeked under the door into the holding cell. He could see there was only one man in there, and it looked like he was tied to a chair. He heard a yell from one of the guys down the hallway and the sounds of a fight. A few moments later he heard someone approaching the door and decided to hide in a corner, under a desk, in his stealth form again. A moment later the door blew in and Centurion followed by Tomas entered the room.

  “Check that door!” Tomas said and Centurion ripped it off its hinges and set it against the wall.

  “Thank God!” Centurion said and turned to Tomas, “He’s alive!”

  “Let’s get him out of here.”

  They went into the room and Shadow listened as they freed the Cop, who was thanking them profusely, Shadow suspected he had heard of their plans to kill him.

  “Take him upstairs, I want to take a quick look around,”

  “Sure thing, Tomas. Come on officer, there are a bunch of folks upstairs who are going to be very happy to see you!” Centurion said.

  Shadow watched as they left and then Tomas came back into the room.

  Tomas looked around then saw the sewer cover and lifted it a little, “Pweeh! Poor Cat’s gonna stink after a trip down there!”

  “Which is why I didn’t go down there.”

  Shadow smiled as Tomas dropped the cover and looked around.

  “By the desk,” Shadow said dropping his invisibility and other cloaking spells, he had already crawled out from under it when Centurion had left.

  “How did you do that?”

  “That would be telling,” Shadow grinned.

  “There were guards in here, weren’t there?”

  “They were going to kill the Cop. I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “You could have just subdued them.”

  “No, they were both armed. But even if I had, then what? Have them tell Laughing Boy? Or Circe? Yeah, I don’t see myself surviving that situation.”

  “We could protect you.”

  “No, you couldn’t. I can’t leave her, Tomas.”

  “What if I told everyone you helped?”

  “Then you’d be seeing her in a new fur coat.”

/>   “You’d still go back?”

  “Of course. For now, that is where I am.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why the help?”

  “Because this was wrong? Really now. By the way, you might want to go around to Tony Sharp Shoes’ house. I hear he might be in trouble with his boss soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tomas!” Some one shouted down the hall, “You okay down there?”

  “Coming!” He yelled back and when he turned around Shadow was nowhere to be seen again.

  “I have got to learn how you do that,” Tomas said with a sigh and headed upstairs to join the others.

  Consequences

  Shadow was drowsing in bed; the last few weeks had been fairly quiet. The theft of the Hennessy collection, or as he liked to think of it, the return, had been discovered when the original owners held a press conference to discuss the recovery of their stolen property. Needless to say the newies had been buzzing about that for the last week. The public debate was shaping up to be rather interesting; most of the people were siding against the Hennessy’s, so of course a lot of the politicians were talking that line now as well.

  His phone rang and he picked it up looking at the screen. Stephanie was calling, he hadn’t seen her in a few days, they’d peaked last week and were moving more into the fuck-buddy stage of things. That suited Shadow just fine, he wasn’t looking for any long term relationships, Circe was about all he could handle on that score right now, and he wouldn’t call that a relationship exactly, well, not a healthy one at least. She wanted him because he was an animal, and he couldn’t leave her for the same reason. Course he did enjoy it most of the time ....

  He stopped that train of thought and answered the phone. “Yeah, Steph?”

  “We have your girlfriend. We want our property back,” a voice he’d never heard before said.

  “What stuff would this be?” Shadow asked and yawned. Damn pranksters, Stephanie must have lost her phone again.

  “The jewelry you stole from the Museum last month. We want it back, it belongs to us. If we don’t get it, we’re going to turn your girlfriend into dog food.”

  Shadow sat up and swung his feet down to the floor.

  “Who is this and what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t think we don’t know you did it. We have our sources, Shadow Cat. Now are you going to get our property back? Or do we kill young Stephanie here?”

  Shadow thought fast, this wasn’t good.

  “According to the newspapers, the stuff I think you’re talking about is in Europe now.”

  “That’s not our concern.”

  “How do I know you have Stephanie?”

  “That’s easy,” a moment later Shadow heard Stephanie’s voice: “Shadow! Save me, they ...” She was cut off then and the voice came back on the phone, “See?”

  “Put her back on, I want to be sure that’s her and you’re not using a mimic.”

  “I don’t think so, Shadow Cat.”

  “Then you can forget it. I’m not flying to Europe to do your dirty work on what could easily be faked. And if she turns up dead, I’ll just have to spend the rest of my life hunting your ass down. You want to deal? Then put her on the phone and let her talk.”

  There was a long pause, and then some muffled talking.

  “Shadow?” It was Stephanie again.

  “Are you okay Stephanie?”

  “I, I think so. They kidnapped me yesterday. They say you took something that belonged to them.”

  “What was the day we first met?”

  “Tuesday the fifth, why?”

  “Just wanted to be sure it was you, they treating you okay?”

  “Yes, so far. Are you going to get me out of here?” She said and sniffed, Shadow suspected she had been crying.

  “Of course. Might take a week or two though.”

  “Okay, that’s enough!” The voice broke back in. “Does that meet with your approval then?”

  “I’ll be checking up on her. Don’t lose the phone; I won’t be taking mine with me.”

  “You’ve got seven days, Shadow.”

  “It’ll take me that long just to fly there and back!”

  “Not our problem.”

  “Well if you want the stuff back, you’re going to have to work with me.”

  “Ten days, that’s all!”

  “Okay.” Shadow hung up the phone and cursed. Now what? Getting up he checked his apartment for bugs, nothing. He geared up then, sword, pistol, knives, his armored duster, then changed into his stealth form and slipped out of his apartment.

  Right off he did notice a bug planted right above his door. He swore, but left it there. He made a note to sound proof the door better in the future.

  He went up to the roof then and found two people watching the entrance from the building across the street. That made getting out a little more difficult, but not too hard. He headed down to Bell’s then and scoped the place out before going inside. Nothing seemed out of place, but Carl was sitting in Shadow’s booth waiting. Shadow went in the back and snagged one of the bar backs and had them give Carl a note to head to the back rooms.

  “Any idea what happened, Carl?” Shadow asked as he entered the hallway.

  “The insurance agent I worked with was killed. Looks like they really put the screws to him too. The PD have it down as a murder and are investigating, no clues though.”

  “Any idea how they put me in the picture?” Shadow growled.

  “Not sure. Someone tried to grab me a couple of days ago, I thought it was Laughing Boy, for some reason he thinks I had something to do with Tony Sharp Shoes skipping out on him. So I decided to lay low, then this morning I find out about Phil. Jonny2fer and a few others say some guys were around asking questions about who I did business with, and paying well for the info. Someone probably put you and me together and they went from there.”

  “Yeah, they grabbed Stephanie, that gal I was screwing. They want me to go to Europe and steal the stuff back or they’ll turn her into dog food.”

  “Ouch, that sucks. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not going to Europe! Somehow I don’t think they’re going to just pat me on the head, hand her over, and let me go after I give them the stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’d doubt that. So just gonna let her hang? I know you two sort of slacked off.”

  Shadow sighed and shook his head, “She’s a nice gal, I couldn’t do that to her. Besides, what sort of message would it send if I let people mess around with the gals I’m fucking?”

  “That you’re a cold S-O-B?”

  “A cold and no longer getting laid S-O-B.”

  “Good point.”

  “If I give you a cell phone number, can you track it without alerting whoever has it?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. My nephew does that shit all the time.”

  “Good, get it done and then call me on this number.” Shadow handed him a piece of paper. “The number I want tracked is the circled one.”

  “What about your phone?”

  “Left it in my apartment, I don’t want them doing the same to me. They have my place staked out as well, so stay away from it. Think you can get to your nephew without getting grabbed?”

  “Sure. Jonny2fer owes me a few favors, so he’s taking me around.”

  “Dear lord, Carl! That’s an accident waiting to happen!”

  “Hey, I don’t take weak measures. He shot someone this morning as it is. I think they’ll be backing off soon now that they are talking to you anyway. Jonny thinks it's great fun, they’ll think twice about messing with him a second time.”

  “Alright, just go. I need to think.”

  Shadow watched as Carl left, and then he snuck off to his safe house. That took a while, he backtracked three different times, the first time he found they’d put someone on him somehow. They were employing some serious talent apparently; best he could figure it was they
picked him up at Bell’s.

  His safe house was clean, and he took the time to check his fail-safes, then he did some research. The Hennessy’s had a lot of money, and a lot of connections. He found a bunch of online video’s and interviews and listened to each of them. It took him a while to place the voice, but he got it after two hours: Vincent Gregory, old man Hennessy’s right-hand man, he worked directly for the head of the Hennessy family.

  His cell phone rang. “Speak to me.”

  “Shadow, it’s forty-three Irving avenue.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell, what’s there?”

  “The Hennessy estate. Place is pretty well secured too.”

  “Meet me at Nick’s at seven, watch yourself.”

  “You too.”

  Shadow hung up and pulled the battery from the phone. He snuck out through the back door and found a nice vantage point and staked out his safe house. The throwaway phones didn’t have GPS, Shadow always tricked them so they jumped towers when he talked as well, so you couldn’t get a good fix on them. Phones like Stephanie’s had GPS, and were much easier to track. Shadow wondered why they didn’t disable it? Maybe they didn’t think he’d track it? Or maybe they just didn’t care ....

  He gave his stakeout another thirty minutes then went off to scout out the Hennessy place. It was still daylight and there were a lot of people walking around the area, so he used his human form to check it out. After stashing his overcoat and gear of course, wearing the same clothes might give him away after all.

  After an hour of poking about he didn’t see anything, but the place did look like a tough nut to crack, there was a wall around it and cameras everywhere. Getting in there wasn’t going to be easy and he had to believe they knew about his stealth abilities and would be ready for them, so he went and headed off to the bar. He staked that out for the next two hours. When Carl finally did show up, Shadow noticed he had a tail, and several others descended on the place after Carl had gone inside. They were keeping their distance however, of course anyone with half a brain wouldn’t get near Jonny2fer, he was nigh invulnerable, and a complete psychopath. Shadow himself was happy that Jonny liked cats. He slipped inside and found Carl.

  “They’re all over you, Carl,” Shadow said.